My dad always told me that the world can never have enough heroes. Every man & woman can be a hero. Every small act of love, tenderness, support, dignity, help can make one a hero.
Today morning as I started the day, i cannot but think of the lessons that he taught me and i hope to teach my kids.
Today morning, we woke up to some inspiring news as well as some distraughtful news. But from the dark, light emerges and thus we have 2 heroes for today
LIEUTENANT GENERAL JAY B. SILVERIA
Lt Gen Jay Silveria is the head of the Air Force Academy. 5 African American cadets had the N***r word written on their doors and Lt Gen Jay Silveria was having none of it. He gave a wonderful & strong speech leaving no one in doubt as to what he thought of the racists in the academy and elsewhere. 3 powerful sentences from his speech:
"That kind of behavior has no place at the prep school, it has no place at USAFA, and it has no place in the United States Air Force,"
"You should be outraged not only as an airman, but as a human being."
”If you can't treat someone with dignity and respect, then you need to get out. If you can't treat someone from another gender, whether that's a man or a woman, with dignity and respect, then you need to get out. If you demean someone in any way, then you need to get out. And if you can't treat someone from another race, or different color skin, with dignity and respect, then you need to get out."
Lt Gen Silveria, Do us a favor. Run for public office after your time in the military. Your moral compass means that millions will benefit, irrespective of the party that you choose.
ELON MUSK:
Many, if not all technology disruptors are men of quirky nature. Let me leave it at that. Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs and now you can add Elon Musk to that list. I believe that the greatest issue & challenge of the country is the lack of INSPIRATION and goal worthy of national interest & attention. The last time we had something that got us forward was the manned mission to Moon in the 1960s. With the wealth lying around in corporates and no inspiring goal, we have been reduced to petty fights over soulless maximizing of money.
Elon Musk announced BFR — Big Falcon Rocket earlier today in Australia. The ‘F’ also has another acronym worthy of mild censorship. But in every other aspect, i love BFR. It is the smaller cousin of the biggest rocket human minds have ever conceptualized — SeaDragon. Against SeaDragon’s dimensions of 23m wide (25 yards — 1/4th of a football field) x 150 m tall (45 stories tall!), BFR will be 9 meters wide & 154 meters tall. The goal is to go to Mars or use rockets for faster continental travel. To me, Mars, Moon and space exploration hold more enthusiasm than travel within Earth. Imagine launching 20m / 30 m satellites instead of 12m James Webb Telescope. Imagine refueling James Webb Telescope or Hubble Telescope to get them to go for many more decades. Getting the plan to fruition even later than 2022 that he envisages is worthy a goal for the country to come together.
Whether Elon makes it or not isn’t the point. If he can light the imagination of the nation & start a technology race, his vision is good enough.